You could look it up - in Late Egyptian

Leskos' Dictionary of Late Egyptian includes colloquial entries from Deir el-Medina

by Ricardo Howell

Traveling through Egypt during 1500 B.C.E. to 1000 B.C.E. and need to know how to share your thoughts with the locals? Chances are if the Egyptians of this time had a way to say something you can find the words to say it in the revised edition of Dictionary of Late Egyptian by Wilbour Professor of Egyptology Leonard Lesko and Egyptology researcher Barbara Lesko.

The dictionary, an updated and expanded version of an earlier edition published between 1980 and 1990, was recently released in two volumes by B.C. Scribe Publications. A seminal reference tool for Egyptology scholars, the dictionary now includes more than 400 new word entries for a total of about 5,000, as well as nearly 2,000 new word meanings

Professor Lesko, who spearheaded the earlier edition using declassified Air Force translation software and hardware, says that Egyptian dialects were going through much transformation during the 1500 to 1000 B.C.E. - called Late Egyptian - period.

"It's the period of quite a bit of foreign contact, when you find the entry of Semitic and other loan words that the Egyptians borrowed through contact with the cultures of Asia Minor and other areas," says Lesko.

"Just about everything happened during this time," says Lesko. Egypt experienced invasion by seafaring peoples; attacks by Libyans; work strikes; the deposition of a high priest; and a harem conspiracy. According to Lesko, this was also the period of the Israelite exodus from Egypt.

In addition to including new references to classical inscriptional material found in the Egyptian temples and on commemorative stone stelae, the revised addition also includes words and concepts from poetry and love songs and nearly 200 letters recently uncovered in Deir el-Medina, a workmen's village located near the Valley of the Kings.

The dictionary entries included from Deir el-Medina are decidedly more colloquial, says Lesko. In a letter to his wife, one of the workmen writes, "Send me beans for my bread, I'm tired of eating bread alone."